Posted by on
A federal grand jury charged two men yesterday with bank and wire fraud in excess of more than $300,000. Lenard G. Christi, 65, of Newton and Robert Felleman, 60, whose most recent address was in West Roxbury, are accused of defrauding Fleet Bank
A federal grand jury charged two men yesterday with bank and wire fraud in excess of more than $300,000. Lenard G. Christi, 65, of Newton and Robert Felleman, 60, whose most recent address was in West Roxbury, are accused of defrauding Fleet Bank (now Bank of America) between October 2000 and July 2001 using counterfeit checks and wire transfers to accounts in other countries. Authorities said the men first tried to deposit a $15 million check drawn from the Central Bank of Nigeria into a Fleet account controlled by Felleman in October 2000. Fleet did not lose any money in the transaction, but Felleman and Christi allegedly succeeded in defrauding the bank of about $300,000 in July 2001 by depositing an altered check in the same account, then transferring about $200,000 to an account in Taiwan and making cash withdrawals of more than $80,000. They also allegedly transferred about $80,000 to an account in Nigeria.